Pricing Overview

Translation is certainly a business where doing things cheaply can get expensive. TBSJ focuses on overall efficiency and finding the best ways to get work done, not on how our translation rates compare with our competitors. The average experience level of our project managers is over 10 years. What does this mean for our clients? It means they get what they need the first time around without spending more than they have to.

TBSJ gives its clients quick access to the right people and gets things done properly the first time around. We make sure we understand your priorities and look for smart ways to reduce costs.

Standard Pricing Chart

Currency:

Subject

Japanese to English

English to Japanese

Legal, Financial(except Equity Research)

¥24/character

¥35/word

Equity Research

Pricing based on clients requirements, such as timing, overnight services, frequency of urgent reports, and total monthly volume.

Medical, Pharmaceutical

¥24/character

¥35/word

General Business

¥18/character

¥30/word

Engineering, Scientific, Technical

¥18/character

¥30/word

Marketing Material

¥20-¥28/character

¥32-¥42/word

Subject

Japanese to English

English to Japanese

Legal, Financial(except Equity Research)

£0.17/character

£0.25/word

Equity Research

Pricing based on clients requirements, such as timing, overnight services, frequency of urgent reports, and total monthly volume.

Medical, Pharmaceutical

£0.17/character

£0.25/word

General Business

£0.13/character

£0.22/word

Engineering, Scientific, Technical

£0.13/character

£0.22/word

Marketing Material

£0.14-£0.20/character

£0.23-£0.30/word

Subject

Japanese to English

English to Japanese

Legal, Financial(except Equity Research)

$0.22/character

$0.31/word

Equity Research

Pricing based on clients requirements, such as timing, overnight services, frequency of urgent reports, and total monthly volume.

Medical, Pharmaceutical

$0.22/character

$0.31/word

General Business

$0.16/character

$0.27/word

Engineering, Scientific, Technical

$0.16/character

$0.27/word

Marketing Material

$0.18-$0.25/character

$0.29-$0.37/word

Notes:

TBSJ applies the rates above in almost all cases, but in certain situations, there may be reasons why special rates (higher or lower) apply.

British pound and US dollar pricing is occasionally revised based on exchange rate fluctuations against the yen; however, TBSJ keeps adjustments to the minimum and generally does so less than once or twice per year.

For long technical manuals where the content is not particularly complicated, the rate applied may be lower than shown above. Additionally, technical manuals may contain repetitive text that can be leveraged to reduce cost.

Rates for marketing material is set as a range due to the potentially very time intensive nature of the work. The rate will be higher if marketing copy must be crafted in a creative fashion while maintaining the nuances of the original text, but lower for materials such as brochures where most of the content is general product descriptions and specifications.

Express services are not available for marketing material translations, and in general, the working time will be at least 50% longer than other types of translation.

For on-going contracts and retained services, prices will be agreed based on client requirements.

Formatting, DTP, and Graphic Editing

For each 5,000 words (or 10,000 Japanese characters) of translation, 30 minutes of basic formatting is included for MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, after which additional work is charged at a rate of 5,000 yen/hour.

For graphic editing or formatting of InDesign, Illustrator, and Visio documents, or work such as text preprocessing (line break fixing, encoding problems, etc.) and content management or link testing for webpages, TBSJ will provide a quote based on the individual requirements of the project.

Minimum Price for all Projects

20,000 yen (unless otherwise specified in contracts for ongoing work)

Translation Memory and Repetition Discounts

Translation companies are increasingly relying on translation memory software to improve productivity and reduce costs. Essentially, the software draws on a database of previous translations and presents repeated or similar text to the translator for reuse.

The following materials tend to see the most significant cost reductions through translation memory software:

Version updates to technical manuals

Annual IR reports, or any report that is produced on a regular cycle

Excel files with repetitive data

Any document that includes significant amounts of text from other previously translated documents

Repeated text captured by translation memory software still needs to be checked and edited in context, so still incurs some cost and is therefore priced at a discount of the full translation rate. Below is an example of a quote for a project with repetition discount:

Total volume:

10,000 Japanese characters of general business translation

New translation:

6,500 char @ 18 yen/char = 117,000 yen

Exact Matches (80% discount):

2,500 char @ 18 yen/char x 80% discount = 9,000 yen

Fuzzy Matches (50% discount):

1,000 char @ 18 yen/char x 50% discount = 9,000 yen

Price before discount:

180,000 yen

Total discount:

45,000 yen (25%)

Total price:

135,000 yen

Note: The level of discount varies based on how useful matching is to the translator.